Category Archives: d-day

The D-Day landings and the campaign in North West Europe in 1944 and 1945 are normally thought of as beginning in Normandy on 6 June and ending in Berlin on 8 May 1945. As usual with anything military history related, the real story behind the scenes is much different. The whole campaign from D-Day onwards depended on much preparation in Britain for months, if not years afterwards. In fact, virtually every corner of Britain will have some kind of connection with D-Day.

Millions of troops in Britain – British, American, Canadian and from many other allied nations – had to be accommodated somewhere. They all had to train somewhere. Equipment had to be manufactured and stored; supplies had to be delivered. There were marshalling camps, embarkation points; places where Mulberry Harbours were constructed. Dockyards, airfields, factories. The many units and organisations required numerous different headquarters. It is pretty obvious that in early 1944 Britain was one large armed camp geared up towards becoming a launchpad for the second front.

We’re currently working on a new page on the D-Day Museum website called ‘D-Day on your Doorstep’. Over the coming months we will be adding D-Day related locations to the map, and building a picture of Britain’s role in launching D-Day. We would love to hear from you if your area has any D-Day links, or if you would like to add any detail to the locations that we have already uploaded.

To see the ‘D-Day on your Doorstep’ page visit the D-Day Museum website here.

It’s the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings coming up soon, and aside from the blanket coverage of the First World War, expect various documentaries about the subject.

One of the things that has always interested me about D-Day and Operations Neptune and Overlord, is the sheer amount of administration, planning and ‘behind the scenes’ work needed to keep an army in action. I can’t remember the exact figure, but I think during the Second World War less than 20% of all servicemen in allied armies fought in the ‘teeth’ arms. War had become so technologically advanced that it took far more resources to keep vehicles, weapons and the men that operated them in action.

One case in point is the huge number of US units based in England from 1942 onwards. American units began to arrive from early 1942 as part of Operation Bolero – the American build up in Europe – but the numbers of troops and units reached a high water mark just before 6 June 1944.

Very few parts of the British Isles did not have US troops stationed near them. There were particularly large concentrations of US troops in places such as Northern Ireland, the West Country in Devon, Cornwall and Wiltshire, and Eight Air Force airfields in East Anglia.

It was a similar situation at airfields. Stoney Cross airfield, in the New Forest in Hampshire, hosted the 367 Fighter Bomber Group Headquarters and 392, 393 and 394 Fighter Bomber Squadrons of the US Army Air Forces.These Squadrons operated P-38 Lightnings and during D-Day and the three days after flew nine missions. But aside from these rather more glamorous units, the station was also home to 17 Station Complement Squadron, 32 Mobile Reclamation and Repair Squadron, 217 Medical Dispensary, 327 Service Group, 807 Chemical Company, 1113 Signal Company, 1180 Quartermaster Company, 1292 Military Police Company 1830 Ordnance Company and 2200 Quartermaster Truck Company. To keep aircraft in the air, the men operating them needed engineering, signal, logistics, transport and ordnance support. And once you have that many men on an air base, you are bound to need medical and provost services to keep them healthy and well-behaved! And Stoney Cross was a particularly small and remote place – check it out here.

Some of the units that we see here are not the kinds that we think of. I love Band of Brothers, but how many men behind the scenes worked to get Easy Company into action? Sometimes it is all too easy to overlook the many unglamorous units and roles in an army, but they are all part of the same spear, with the infantry, armour and artillery being the sharp tip.

Paul Reed has carved out something of a niche with his ‘Walking’ Battlefield Guides. His ‘Walking the Somme‘ in particular set the standard for Battlefield Guides, long before the explosion in Battlefield tourism. The interesting thing I find about Battlefield Guides is that I own so many of them, yet out of all the Battlefields out there I have only ever actually been to Arnhem! The thing is, they are actually useful for getting a grip on what happened, where and when. If you forget that you’re sat in living room, and if the book is well written and well illustrated, then you can still go some way to visualising what happened at the Battlefield in question. Paul has spent an awful lot of time around Battlefields in North West Europe, and it certainly shows in the manner in which he writes.

This is unlike most other Battlefield Guides on Normandy, in that it only deals with D-Day itself. No doubt if you are interested in visiting the Battlefield area in Normandy in general you might find this a bit anaemic, but I actually think its a very good choice. To do all of the D-Day beaches and all of the Normandy sites, in detail, would take you forever. However, doing the D-Day Beaches and the airborne areas might take you a nice couple of days, and would make much more sense into the bargain. And from what I have seen such a tour would take in some lovely scenery as a nice by product. There are plenty of museums and sites to see along the landing beaches too. Perhaps a Holt’s style map might make a useful addition, but there are plenty of places from where the tourist can obtain a good map nowadays. It has enough useful practical information without being overloaded – the beauty of the modern world is that anyone can go online and search for hotels, ferries etc, so there isn’t such a need to include them in what is first and foremost a history book.

I’ve written a fair bit about what happened on D-Day, unsurprisingly, for a Portsmouthmilitary historian and somebody who has worked at the D-Day Museum in Southsea. I found Paul’s book very illuminating – in particular, I enjoyed the section on Sword Beach near Ouistreham, where I was unable to get off my ferry a month or so ago! I also enjoyed reading about the 1st Hampshires at Hamel in the first wave on D-Day. I’ve written about them in my own book, but reading their story here certainly added to my understanding of what happened in those fateful hours on 6 June 1944. Obviously elements such as Pegasus Bridge and Merville have been raked over so much that it is difficult to write much new about them. It’s also got some cracking illustrations, including many that I haven’t seen before. In common with many battles, we are used to seeing the same old photographs of D-Day again and again, so it’s nice to see some that I suspect have never been published before.

It’s quite hard to write about such a well-known event as D-Day in a fresh way, in what is a very crowded market, and especially when it comes to the battlefield guide. But Paul Reed has done a very good job indeed here. My acid test for any battlefield guide is whether it makes me feel like I have been there, when I haven’t. This one sure does. I don’t know how Paul finds time to fit it all in!

D-Day – and indeed the subsequent Battle of Normandy – has to be one of the most photographed military campaigns in history. Even before the age of mass media and digital photography, some of the images that came out of 6 June 1944 are iconic. But we could also be forgiven for wondering, if there are so many photographs of Normandy, why do we keep seeing the same photographs again and again in books? If I asked you to nominate five famous D-Day images, I reckon I could probably guess three of them. In fact, it’s quite shameful how some authors – and indeed publishers – seem willing to peddle the same images, and history, over and over again whilst presenting it as ‘new’ to the unsuspecting enthusiast. This is a quandry that Andrew Whitmarsh has gone a long way towards remedying.

It is intriguing why authors decide to use some photos over and over again as illustrations. There are literally millions of photographs in military museums, such as the Imperial War Museum. And the D-Day Museum‘s collections are no different. There aremany photographs, most from the collections of the D-Day Museum, many of which have never been seen before. But it’s not just a catalogue of photos – they are very well explained and interpreted, and cover not just D-Day itself, but also the build up to the liberation, and the subsequent fighting in Normandy in the summer of 1944. There is also a very interesting section about the fantastic Overlord Embroidery. Inspired by the Bayeux Tapestery, the Embroidery is an epic portrayal of Operation Overlord, and is housed in the D-Day Museum. Almost as interesting as the Embroidery itself, is a behind-the-scenes look at how it was conceived and created, and how it came to Portsmouth.

Published some years ago in hardback, the publishers have recently released a paperback version. As somebody who has possibly ready every book published about D-Day, it is refreshing to see some new images. I enjoyed reading this book very much.

On Monday I travelled to France and back, without actually setting foot in France!

To go back to the start of the story, my employers very kindly asked me to give a lecture onboard Brittany FerriesMV Normandie, on the route between Portsmouth and Ouistreham-Caen. I gave a talk on my book ‘Portsmouth’s World War Two Heroes’ on each leg. It wasn’t actually worth me getting off the boat while it was docked at Ouistreham, so I stayed in my cabin and took some pictures of the gorgeous looking beach. Of course, those sands formed part of Sword beach on 6 June 1944.

Both talks were very well received. It is a new venture that Brittany are trialling, and it seems to have been appreciated by many people who attended. It was also a new experience for me, as I had never sailed on this route before. Hence for the first time I was able to take pictures, up on deck, of the warships in Pompey Harbour, and also experience sailing out past the Round Tower, down past the Solent forts, then round Bembridge ledge and past the round tower.

Having received these guides that both relate to the Airborne Brigdgehead in Normandy, and are both by Carl Shilleto, I thought it would make sense to review them together. I have used the Battleground series of Battlefield Guides myself when visiting Arnhem in the past. To my eternal regret, I haven’t actually managed to get to any other battlefields apart from Arnhem, so until the time that somebody gives me a break in becoming a battlefield guide I will have to make do with reading battlefield guide books from the comfort of my own home!

Mind you, in this case it’s not really a case of making do – these are very good books indeed. Exceptionally well illustrated with archive and contemporary photographs, and with a wealth of appendices covering recommended reading, order of battle, glossaries and a handy reference list of grid reference co-ordinates for Satnav use. The maps in particular are a great resource – in particular the colour maps on the back are very useful. Perhaps the only thing that is missing with this series is a larger scale, detailed Holts-style map, but I guess if you want something like that you can go out and buy one yourself, or one of the French Michelin maps. There isn’t a huge amount on tourist information – some basic information such as climate, health, getting there, the perils of battlefield relics are well covered. With the internet, and ever disappearing international borders, it shouldn’t take too much trouble to google up some ferries and hotels.

I’ve done a fair bit of studying of individual soldiers who fought in the airborne bridgehead – namely Portsmouth’s own Sergeant Sid Cornell DCM and the 16 year old Boy Para Private Bobby Johns. Reading this book has helped me understand what happened to both of them in much more context. And I guess that’s what a good battlefield guidebook should do – make you feel like you have been there, without actually being there. I wouldn’t mind betting that out of everyone who buys a battlefield guide, something like 75% might not actually got to the area. And is that such a bad thing?

Just a quick note to everyone who came down to the D-Day Museum yesterday. My talks went really well, and we had more than 70 people for each. And not all of them were friends and family! I had some very interesting questions about Portsmouth’s World War Two Dead, and none of them too awkward! Just out of interest, the Museum had 1,149 visitors yesterday, which was almost 50% more than Remembrance Sunday last year!

Thank you to my sister Nicola for the picture, to my girlfriend Sarah and family for coming down, and also friends and colleagues for supporting me too. And of course Andrew Whitmarsh at the D-Day Museum for booking me, and the staff at D-Day for helping make the day go so well.

It’s been a good couple of days, last night we (Portsmouth City Museum) won a clean sweep at the Portsmouth News Guide Awards – Best exhibition for Little Black Dress, and runner up for Football in the City!